BY DR. HABIB SIDDIQUI

Burma is a country that has people of many races, ethnicities and religions. Because of lack of reliable census data the exact number of these various communities is not known. There is no question though that the Buddhist population makes up the vast majority in the country, followed by Muslims, Christians, Hindus and animists. According to non-official estimates by various agencies (including those of the US State Department), the Muslim population in Burma is somewhere between 10 to 20%, including the much-discriminated and suffering Rohingya population of Arakan (Rakhaing) state, whose nearly half the population is now living in Diaspora as refugees in many parts of our world as a result of Burma's inhuman, discriminatory Citizenship Law of 1982.

Dr. Habib Siddiqui
An often-practised devious way to grab someone's land is to deny his right to that property. Nothing could be more horrific when a government itself gets into such a criminal practice. The most glaring example of such a crime can be seen in the practices of the regimes that have ruled Burma (now Myanmar) since its independence from Britain in 1948 (especially, since 1962 when Gen. Ne Win came to power). In our times, one can hardly find a regime that has been so atrocious, so inhuman and so barbarous in its denial of basic human rights to a people that trace their origin to the land for nearly a millennium. The victims are the Rohingya Muslims living in the Arakan (now Rakhine) state. They have become the forgotten people of our time.